Verb
determined to mete out an appropriate punishment for the CEO guilty of insider trading
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Verb
May today and every day lead us to the ultimate finish line – meting you at the pearly gates.—Ryan Gaydos, Fox News, 2 Mar. 2025 Execution is a universal punishment for treason; only barbarians violate civilized norms in meting it out.—Daniel Foster, National Review, 30 Nov. 2023
Noun
Portuguese Bend residents generally favor a system more in tune with metes and bounds, a mapping method that uses physical landmarks such as trees, walls and roads to measure parcels.—Jack Flemmingstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 6 Mar. 2023 But watching him and Kayce and Beth and Rip mete out frontier justice can be uncomfortably satisfying, an atavistic thrill.—Sridhar Pappu, The Atlantic, 10 Nov. 2022 See All Example Sentences for mete
Word History
Etymology
Verb
Middle English, from Old English metan; akin to Old High German mezzan to measure, Latin modus measure, Greek medesthai to be mindful of
Noun
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin meta
First Known Use
Verb
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2
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